Should women who get pregnant after premarital sex expect the men to marry them?

Professor Mike S. Adams is pro-life, but he posted something on Facebook that I must disagree with.

He posted this:

Over 80% of post-abortive women said they would have had the baby if the guy had been supportive. Five guys find out their girl is pregnant: The first two pressure abortion, the third walks away or was never present, the fourth sticks around for 80 to 120 days, and the fifth steps up totally. This not a woman’s problem. It is a lack-of-manhood problem.

Mike has about 5000 friends, and 44 of them liked it. I would think that most of these people would call themselves pro-life conservatives. But I don’t think what he posted promotes the pro-life cause.

I replied to him with this:

Mike I could not disagree more. It’s a woman’s problem unless it is rape, since the woman consents to sex with a man she is not married to. In fact, the cause of abortion is YOUR opinion – namely, the opinion that women should not be obligated to be chaste or to think rationally about who they are having sex with. There is a path to marriage that goes through courtship, and that path has a name: self-control. Stop enabling the poor choices of women, because we have to stop the murder of unborn children.

Many of Mike’s friends supported him. So I wrote this:

Wow. I had no idea that so many of Mike’s friends think that the Bible is a pack of lies when it says that fornication is morally wrong. I guess you guys aren’t Christians then, since you feel so free and easy about revising the Bible when you feel like it.

If fornication is wrong, it’s wrong for women AND men. And you don’t fornicate and then expect happy outcomes from it. There is a word for a person who sins and then expects a good outcome. A FOOL.

Then Mike replied to me:

Sorry Wintery. Where I come from the man leads and is, therefore, responsible.

I replied to that with this:

Mike, I agree with male leading – IF the man is a Christian. But the men that these women chose are not Christians. And you can’t expect men to act morally unless they have a theistic framework that grounds morality.

Women should not be told, by you and others, that they can choose to have sex with immoral men and then expect the immoral men to act morally. That is just enabling abortion by justifying a lack of prudence and wisdom. Instead, we should be holding women accountable to choose men who WILL control themselves.

We should not be supporting the fantasy view of love that says that recreational sex magically leads men to commit to protect, provide and lead women for life. That view is neither wise nor Biblical. On the contrary, recreational sex leads men to NOT commit. Women have to learn how to select men, to evaluate them for marriage, and to make them prove themselves. We need to tell men AND women that sex before marriage is morally wrong. And we need to be convincing by showing them how recreational sex does not lead to stable marriages, and puts children, unborn and born, in harm’s way. Telling the truth about the danger of premarital sex is the best way to stop the killing of unborn children.

Here’s an example to make the point. We do not blame bears for mauling campers. Bears are bears, and they were bears before the campers showed up in their cave. We ought to blame the camper for choosing to wander off the trail and into the bear’s den in order to PET THE BEAR. Wild bears may eat free food that is offered to them, but they are not going to let you pet them and hug them. Women, like campers, need to be responsible. They need to choose the right man for marriage. They need to exercise self control. They need to make the man prove his ability to commit and support a family BEFORE they have sex with him. No one hires an employee without understanding what job they need done and then making sure that the candidate they choose can do the job. And that’s what we need to tell women.

Obviously, I was a little upset when I wrote that, but I hope it wasn’t too bad.

So what’s the point I was trying to make by being critical of Mike? I think the problem we have today is that men who are pro-life are unwilling to hold women accountable for their own poor decisions about sex and marriage. Basically, conservative and/or Christian men think that women don’t need to think through what choices are most likely to avoid abortion and most likely to achieve marriage. These men give tacit approval to the popular trend of trying to achieve marriage through premarital sex (or cohabitation), when the research shows that these behaviors do not result in long-lasting stable marriages. In fact, sex out of wedlock is a good way to get into a situation where an abortion will occur.

In my view, Mike is inadvertently encouraging women to get into the situations where they will be pressured to abort by reinforcing the idea that there is nothing wrong with their plan to achieve marriage by having premarital sex (or cohabitating), and then expecting men to respond to their pregnancy by MARRYING them. Mike seems to be telling women that it is normal for them to expect that marriage will follow from premarital sex with men who have not been vetted for the roles of provider, protector and leader As if marriage is natural for men who don’t even have jobs and who are surrounded by women willing to have sex with them on the first date. Any man who will have recreational premarital sex with a woman is exactly the kind of person who will not commit to lifelong providing and fidelity – he is having sex before marriage because he wants recreation, without the commitment and self-sacrifice that marriage requires. Rationally speaking, it makes no sense for men to buy the cow, and to keep buying the cow with 40 years of labor, when they can get the milk for free. And that’s what we need to tell women – think with your minds, not with your emotions.

[A] recent study reveals that 88 percent of unmarried young adults (ages 18-29) are having sex. The same study, conducted by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, reveals the number doesnʼt drop much among Christians. Of those surveyed who self-identify as “evangelical,” 80 percent say they have had sex.

[…]In addition to having premarital sex, an alarming number of unmarried Christians are getting pregnant. Among unmarried evangelical women between the ages of 18 and 29, 30 percent have experienced a pregnancy (a number thatʼs actually 1 percent higher than among those who donʼt claim to be evangelical).

According to the Guttmacher Institute, nearly half of all pregnancies in America are unintended. And of those, 40 percent end in abortion. More than 1 million abortions occur in the United States each year. But perhaps the most disturbing statistic for the Church: 65 percent of the women obtaining abortions identify themselves as either Protestant or Catholic (37 percent Protestant and 28 percent Catholic). Thatʼs 650,000 abortions obtained by Christians every year.

Christian women are not told that premarital sex is wrong by many Christians and conservatives – and out of that refusal by “Christians” and “conservatives” to take a stand, we get 650,000 abortions per year. We need to have more courage to tell women to be more self-controlled and responsible when they choose who to have sex with, and when to have sex. We need to tell women to make good decisions that lead to stable marriages. We need to tell women to study these issues and to support policies that produce strong, moral men who are willing to marry – for example, by reforming education so that our schools produce men who can find jobs, perhaps by having more male teachers in the classroom. We need to tell women to support policies that make marriage more friendly for men, like abolishing no-fault divorce, and promoting shared parenting. Christians in particular need to counteract the views of love and romance that are prevalent in popular culture with a view of relationships built around chastity and love. Although many people today are uncomfortable with moral absolutes and moral judgments, it would be a good be a good idea for women to promote these things, so that the men they are choosing from are more moral.

In the end, I agree with Mike S. Adams in one respect. Abortion may be caused by a lack of manhood problem. Only the lack of manhood doesn’t come from the men that women choose to have premarital sex with. The lack of manhood comes from men who refuse to hold women accountable for their own free foolish decisions that put unborn children in harm’s way. In addition to the abortion problem that results from those foolish decisions, there is also the explosion in out-of-wedlock births to weigh in the balance. Again, the more people tell women that they should expect men who engage in recreational sex to commit to marriage after premarital sex (or cohabitation), the more fatherlessness we get.

27 thoughts on “Should women who get pregnant after premarital sex expect the men to marry them?”

That said, I do believe that Mike’s posting proves your point when he writes: “The first two pressure abortion, the third walks away or was never present, the fourth sticks around for 80 to 120 days, and the fifth steps up totally.”

Any man who pressures a woman to kill her (and his) own child in NOT committed in any moral sense, and any woman who falls for it is a fool and an accomplice to murder (moral definition). Clearly, the first 4 men are showing no commitment, proving your point when you write: “We should not be supporting the fantasy view of love that says that recreational sex magically leads men to commit to protect, provide and lead women for life.”

Finally, when it comes to abortion, in the final analysis, the woman MUST agree to have her baby “offed” (except in the case of forced abortions, of course). That baby is located in her womb for a number of reasons, one of which is that she is the final layer of protection for him or her. She has to concede to murder for it to happen. So, while I believe abortion is the fault of both the “man” and the “woman,” the woman has the ultimate say in sacrificing her baby at the altar of sex without consequences, the very same altar at which the man worships.

And for the “church” to address this as a manhood problem (symptom) and NOT attack the underlying cause of sinful sex outside of marriage (except for the very good chastity courses out there) is reprehensible. Where are the sermons on the virtues of chastity and the evils of abortion, euthanasia, divorce, etc?!? You will be more likely to hear those, at least alluded to, in the Catholic Church than in the Protestant one, but, even there, they are very limited.

Premarital sex is recreational sex. If a man consents to “fun” then there is no reason to expect him to be motivated by a desire other than the desire for fun. It would be like demanding that anyone who goes skydiving or ziplining with a woman should have to marry her. He is not having the premarital sex for any other reason than why people go skydiving and ziplining. It’s fun. And premarital sex isn’t even clean fun. That’s why people get drunk first. So they can claim they didn’t mean to do it.

No, a man who has recreational sex is looking for … recreational sex. He is not looking for marriage. So you can’t ask him to marry you if his goal was recreational sex. When a woman chooses to have sex with a man, she has the responsibility to make sure that if a baby results, that the man she is choosing has committed to care for the child. That’s why women should not have sex with men before they are married and the commitment to provide and protect has been made.

Are you really saying that the man who contributes to the formation of a child in the womb has no responsibility toward that child, even if you think that he has no responsibility toward the woman? I mean, didn’t he contribute an essential ingredient? What happened to “if you’re gonna play, you’re gonna pay?!?” What am I missing here, because it seems like you are letting the guy off the hook totally?

Not to mention, it is often intense pressure from the guy that helps lead to the abortion. I say he has almost as much blood on his hands as she does – if they both agree to the abortion. She goes in for the murder, and he is out there ready to drive the getaway car. (If it were legally “murder” of course.) Last I saw, the person driving the getaway car gets charged with murder as well.

The Catholic/Protestant abortion percentage is shocking. I think you handled this quite well. I think one aspect to this is often people will look at men and say it is your responsibility to take care of that woman–however, as you’ve said, that man probably isn’t a Christian and has no foundation to do so–in this situation.

It seems people just kind of read it and said “Yes they do need to be responsible!” but kind of let the other party off the hook.

I agree that there are lots of unjustified criticisms of men not “manning up.” This is especially frustrating when it seems that people’s definition of that phrase is to give women whatever they want. Women don’t “woman up” by giving men what they want!

There is, however, a shared obligation from both sexes to live chastely. One thing that I would like to see men more active in is promoting a culture among each other that does not pressure young men to have lots of sex with different women. We have seen the negative psychological effects of this with the recent UCSB shooting. Lots of women make bad choices because they are afraid men won’t take them seriously if they do not have sex with them right away and unfortunately I can’t say that this view is entirely unjustified. Men need to promote chastity among each other and respect the women who choose it for themselves rather than seeing them as more challenging conquests.

I agree. I am a virgin. And one of the reasons why is because when I say I am pro-life, I mean don’t do anything that can possible kill an innocent unborn child. That means no sex before marriage, period. But what I am saying is – is anyone telling women that, too?

I agree: it would also be nice to see men promote chastity in the locker rooms – to both unmarried, and sadly, married men. We had another (pagan) affair (both partners are married to others) where I work out (according to others’ knowledge, not mine, but I admit it does look suspicious), and even the Christian men were joking about how funny it was. :-( My comment was “If you are sure of your facts and find it so interesting, then why don’t you confront them on it? Two other spouses are being terribly harmed by this!” Then they laughed at me. I am so 18th century.

Matt is right. There seems to not be anybody (unless here) that honors chastity. From MTV shows to any news site, no one is wanting chastity. They want to basically “live fast”. So people think virgins are losers or repressed. It’s sickening. Do you know where a lot of this comes from too? I have heard it said this way: Why buy a car without taking a test drive? Most relationships are simply becoming this way, and the premarital sex rate basically displays that in gruesome detail. No one should go for people who ‘test drive’ their mates.

Oh, wait. These girls are only about the party life anyway. So they will just skip over folks who are marriage-minded anyway, like you & I, Wintery. I am a virgin like Wintery too, and because of that most don’t want to have that. They think virgins are boring, and chastity is for squares. Some studies on dating websites have proven that most people will not want to date a virgin. That goes for girls as well. People now just find the “fun” ones who will fornicate and party it up frivolously, expecting relationship to form later. All the while if they were to look around, there are guys (girls) who are marital around her (him). This gets played out all the time, it seems.

What one can do to combat this back for the next girl or guy? Boldness like you said from someone to speak to them, perhaps. However, I think an adoration for God has to grow for the boldness to even work. Otherwise, it will just continue to be repeated.

You made some great points there, WK. The leading cause of abortion isn’t necessarily the men, it’s the people engaging in sin, and as James points out, “when it is full grown it leads to death”. In this case though it’s the death of an innocent child.

Fact of the matter is that many, many who claim Christ don’t live their sexual lives according to His Word. And they don’t live their lives biblically because they don’t want to. And from a practical standpoint, they don’t have to, because of birth control, increased independence, decreased family involvement in one’s life,
financial independence, cheap, safe and widely available medical care, privacy laws, etc.
It’s just that simple.

Unfortunately, there are many areas where Christians prefer not to align themselves with God’s Word (divorce being one of them). This is yet another example of that; I can tell you that as a young Christian woman, I found NON-Christian men a little easier to date in this area, because they considered my refusal to have sex a “lifestyle choice”, whereas quite a few of the fellows from my church were rather pushy. However, I do not want anyone to think I blame only the men. As my dad always said—it takes two to tango!
The Protestant abortion numbers are stomach-turning. What more can we say?
Anyhow, I agree with everything you said. Sadly, the church seems to be afraid to say anything about the way a Christian lives their life. To even say premarital sex, (illegitimate) divorce, shady business practices, or bank heists are wrong is “judgmental”, and I’m sure you know how dangerous it is to have THAT invective slung in one’s direction!
Thanks for standing up for the truth (and people’s well-being), WK.

I have worked at a crisis pregnancy center as a volunteer counselor, and I can confirm mike’s sentiment and reasoning. Most of the women that I worked with told me that they did not expect the father to remain in the picture. Occasionally we would have a couple who would show up together and go through the process together, but that was a rare (and refreshing) occasion. Men were designed to be leaders. When you leave a woman alone in an unplanned pregnancy situation, logic leaves, and fear takes over. I have NEVER had a client who wanted to abort. Those that moved towards abortion, in spite of our efforts, did so because they saw it as their only option. If they had a man in the picture, I believe their cases could have turned out differently. But men nowadays have been programmed to see abortion as a woman’s decision – as in they don’t have the right to get involved. If that changed, and men stepped up, I believe we would see fewer abortions.

Ultimately, men were designed to be leaders, and women were designed to be responders. You can preach at women all you want, but any positive changes in this culture, on that front, are going to have to start with the men, not the women.

Also, I should add that I don’t actually believe that 80% of the abortions would have been prevented by male involvement. That sounds like blame shifting to me. But, maybe half that number?

Your experience coincides with mine at CPC’s. Most women feel pressured by the boyfriend to abort (after he pressured the woman to have sex, no less), and often by her parents (down, down, down with you “christian” parents who recommend abortion for your daughters – shame on you!) as well. Here’s how I think it played out:

1950’s: men were mostly men and women were mostly women
1960’s: women became “men” by asserting their perceived “authority”
1970’s: men followed women’s “authority” for the purpose of gaining sex (abortion begins)

So, now you have feminist (femi-Nazi?) women and feminized men (and a feminized culture to boot). So, the woman spreads her legs, the man bows to the woman’s offer, and the baby gets “offed” in the process, because neither the man nor the woman acted responsibly before or after conception.

Societally, I do believe this is the fault of the feminist movement – 100%. (Not all women are feminist however, but many who would swear they aren’t are more feminist than they realize.) But, individually, I think that there is plenty of blame to go around, and the man needs to step up too, especially when an innocent child is at stake. What happened to “protect, provide, and spiritually lead?”

Ultimately, men were designed to be leaders, and women were designed to be responders. You can preach at women all you want, but any positive changes in this culture, on that front, are going to have to start with the men, not the women.

Praytell. How would you convince these immoral men (e.g. non-Christians) to act morally?

Immoral men won’t suddenly become moral and “take responsibility” and neither will immoral women.

In fact, do you know what worked prior to the 1960s:

1. There was no such thing as no-fault divorce.
2. If you divorced you were shunned.
3. Virginity was prized.
4. Women policed women on sex: keep your legs shut until marriage because giving men sex before marriage decreases the incentive for men to be married.
5. Women and their bastard children were shunned.

All of these things actually led to stable families, men getting married to women and staying married, the vast majority of women were virgins at marriage or had less than 1-2 partners, less unhappiness, etc.

How many women would actually want to go back to this model? Very few. Most women now want to have their cake and eat it too: pre-marital sex galore and lots of fun. Then marriage, children, and settling down. They don’t want to go back to “antiquated and outdated values.”

The majority of actual Christian men who practice what they preach keep it in their pants and won’t pressure a woman into sex. Yet, like our blog host Wintery Knight here no women want to marry someone like that, and they will even go out of their way to have sex with cads and players and so-called “Christian” men.

There are precisely two models that work:

1. Societal standard — where women police other women and shun those that do not comply.
2. Biblical standard — the daughter is the possession of the father, and all suitors must go through him to his daughter. The daughter is kept safe from making mistakes when she is blinded by her attraction to cads and palyers. Subsequently, this is why the father gives away the daugher to the man at marriage which models Genesis 2.

any positive changes in this culture, on that front, are going to have to start with the men, not the women.

This is just excuse making. Women are moral agents. They can choose right or wrong. They can act to change the culture, it isn’t only up to men. Your argument falls flat if you look to recent history. Look at the suffragette movement. It was led and organized by women, and massively changed the culture.

Women need to start taking responsibility for their actions, and accepting the consequences of their actions. All too often what I see is people (men and women alike) twist the story of the prodigal son to ignore the fact that our actions on this world do have lasting consequences on this world. There is no such thing as a temporal “reset” button.

One last thing- even if 90% of men in a society “do the right thing”, the remaining 10% is more than enough to corrupt, or impregnate, all of the foolish, irresponsible women out there. Ultimately, this problem is fixed by correct female behavior, not male behavior.

I agree with everything that you are saying, but back in the 1950’s men were still men. Now, due to feminism, women are policing themselves, but most of those police women are liberal – even in the church. What we need are stronger father figures for women. As I’m sure you know, a woman’s relationship with her father sets a precedence for her relationships with other men throughout her life. Sadly, most women do not have a male figure around to tell them how to appropriately relate to guys. I have shared many of the concepts that Wintry brought up in his post with my clients, and would do so again in a heartbeat. It is valuable information. But it doesn’t take as well coming from me as it would coming from an authoritative man.

Your question is valid: how do we convice unsaved men to act honorably? I would turn that around and ask: how do you convince an unsaved woman to act virtuously? A man will change before a woman will. Have you ever done street ministry? You can reason with a man, but a feminist? No way. She is too emotionally involved to give you the time of day – usually. Ray Comforts stuff is great and provides plenty of good examples of this. I also find it interesting that if a woman gets saved she’ll bring her kids to church, and maybe her husband will come once or twice. That is good and honorable and commendable. That is a tough place to be (a saved woman with an unsaved husband). But if a man gets saved, his whole family usually ends up in church. And that’s Bible.

You’ve got it backwards. Back in the 60’s when women started rebelling in the name of “liberation”, the men as a whole were still being honorable men. It was the women that changed, not the men. With the introduction of no fault divorce, wellfare, etc., women started leaving and taking their kids away from the fathers, or getting pregnant out of wedlock for government benefits, which hurt the babies they had. That’s when a lot of men didn’t grow up to be real men, when their mothers raised them alone while keeping the fathers away. Which is what lead to the mess we see today. It wasn’t men abandoning their children back then, it was women stealing the children from the fathers.

Basically, men were still being men, but the women were rebelling anyways of their own accord. A man can do everything exactly right, and a woman can still choose to rebell if she wants to. Free will and all. You can’t blame men for women’s behavior. To do so is to be in denial, to shift the blame.

As for the original question, I don’t think a man is obligated to marry a woman that gets pregnant with his baby, and any woman who gets pregnant expecting this is an idiot. Having said that, I do think that if a man is involved with getting a woman pregnant, he has equal responsibility as the mother to the baby. He can’t force her to either get an abortion or not get one, that is 100% on her head if she chooses to murder her baby, since she has free will. The father isn’t to be held responsible for her decision. But if she doesn’t abort, then he is responsible to help care for the baby. He did make the choice to engage in risky behavior with a woman he wasn’t married to, knowing full well where babies come from. So if he impregnates a woman, he can’t say “it’s 100% your fault, and 0% mine, you deal with it by yourself”. They both made a stupid decision, they both should deal with the consequences of that decision.

Here, here! The only thing I disagree with is this: if the man drives her to the abortion clinic, and drives her away in the getaway car after the dirty deed is done, then I believe that he too IS morally guilty – based on the analogy to legal precedent. I am quite certain that God will hold him accountable for the pressure he applied to her and for making it easy to kill one of His “little ones.”

I feel the need to clarify a few things: a believe that women are responsible and should be held responsible for their choices. But I also believe that a man is just as responsible for an unplanned pregnancy as a woman. But society nowadays has made abortion a woman’s body issue, and told men that they don’t have the right to get involved – unless of course the woman decides to keep the baby and sue for child support.

I would argue that men are responsible for that unborn child, and are often aware of that responsibility. Just google “post-abortive syndrome men,” for examples of this. It manifests itself a bit different in men, but the point is: it exist. On a subconscious level, or even a conscious level men know that that was their child. Am I arguing for shotgun weddings? No! Marriages that happen because of a baby are neither wise, nor usually successful. But men can walk through the pregnancy with the woman, and see that she and THEIR child are cared for. If she chooses abortion and he urged her not to or was unaware of the decision, than he is not responsible for the child’s death. I’ve heard it said that the choice not to act is as significant as the choice to act. I believe it applies in this situation.

Also, as far that whole women’s liberation, it the women who changed thing (sorry for my cavewoman with a club paraphrasing, I’m typing on my iPod – love your username by the way feminine) absolutely agree. And the result was a role swap. Women are on top, and if you are a white male trying to get a college scholarship than you are out of luck. But what is being suggested, namely focusing all efforts on reforming the nations women, will only serve to perpetuate the imbalance of power. What Mike was doing in his post was calling men to action. I want to see more of that.

Also I don’t want to be misunderstood: I am all for educating women on pregnancy prevention and abstinence. I wouldn’t have worked in a pregnancy center if i thought otherwise. But I would hope that we are also expending as much (if not more) effort to reach men as well. That emphasis on women that is so pervasive in our society, needs to be shifted back to men if we are going to see a revival of manhood.

Also, this will probably be my last response. My husband said I could post my original comment but not to let it turn into an Internet saga, which is what this feels like it’s doing.

So, I’m going to bow out now. (I feel like I need a smiley face or something…)